Hacker News Reader

Comment by windexh8er | Hacker News Reader

As someone in the comments section noted to the author - there are plenty of short haul, unlicensed spectrum, wireless bridges available today that are very affordable. Even if he went with something more long haul oriented he could easily clear well over 30 miles LoS at over 500Mbit (https://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/) in real-world expectations. I would put the money into building a tower on my property and find the closest fiber plant Comcast has for the HFC node that services the general area and make them give me a L3 drop to this bridge. Having done this working for a cable provider in the past, it's trivial and inexpensive (costing well under $10k for the expensive equipment, generally a 5 mile link can be done for under $2k).

Reliance on Comcast won't get you anywhere in most cases, but there are options for this guy other than selling his house.

View on HN

"find the closest fiber plant Comcast has for the HFC node that services the general area and make them give me a L3 drop to this bridge"

You are massively underestimating the work involved here. Aside from the physical constraints of needing a POP installed for handoff to your random wireless bridge, what makes you think the author can "make them" do anything? And what makes you think that Comcast could effectively engineer a solution to support this one-off installation, when they can't even schedule a normal OSP drop?

Edit: rhetorical questions aside, I actually investigated this option for my parents' old home in the boonies. Comcast actively prohibits you from doing this, per their AUP (http://www.comcast.com/Corporate/Customers/Policies/HighSpee...): "Network and usage restrictions: ... sell the Service or otherwise make available to anyone outside the Premises the ability to use the Service (for example, through WiFi or other methods of networking), in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, with the sole exception of your use of Comcast-provided WiFi service"

>Comcast actively prohibits you from doing this

I wouldn't call that 'actively'. They don't have any mechanism to detect this that they use. Source: shared network with neighbor for a long time.

I'll concede that's not the best choice of words. My point was that they probably aren't going to willingly install a drop to your random UBNT radio on a pole. You need that friendly neighbor.

A generous reading of your original post would take "actively" to be interpreted as "explicitly". Unfortunately, generous readership is in short supply :)

Long-haul LoS can be pretty much impossible in parts of the Pacific Northwest due to the geography and ecology (read: hills and trees). The short point-to-point option with a cooperative neighbor could definitely work.

This. Most people, unsurprisingly, are quite nice. I think a lot of people would be willing to do this if they get high-speed service for free.

Why didn't you just write "the hills and trees". This read: thing is getting out of hand.

It's been 15 years since I last had anything to do with long range LoS wireless bridges, but at least back then they also tended to flake out during snowstorms and heavy rain.

My wired Comcast connection sometimes did this too, back when I had it. Might not be any worse!

That's probably not their equipment up on the poles causing that, you can probably fix it for good by replacing some old splitters around your house and just re-terminating all of the coax connectors.

I don't think anything in my house was getting wet. The stuff outside seemed to be in pretty poor condition, and was underground where it could get immersed and such. Their techs liked to just forget to put covers back on things after they were done working, which I'm sure didn't help. In any case, I don't live there anymore so not a problem I have to deal with now.

>find the closest fiber plant Comcast has for the HFC node that services the general area and make them give me a L3 drop to this bridge.

How did you manage to convince them to do that? Where did you mount the radio? How did you power the radio? Every time I've needed something unconventional from the local cable company, if it isn't some pre-existing procedure, they won't do it.

You don't need Airfiber; a pair of NanoStation Loco M5's will easily do 2500' at 150Mbps for about $150 for the pair.

https://www.ubnt.com/airmax/nanostationm/

The article didn't mention, but I wonder if CenturyLink would have been able to provide other services, such as a T1 or frame-relay connection, if they couldn't provide DSL. Might be costly, but maybe not so much if shared between neighbors in a similar predicament?

Why are there no small ISPs doing this like in Eastern Europe? Is there some regulation forbidding doing it commercially?

On the contrary. The regulations of Eastern Europe make it easier for an ISP to startup.

The startup ISPs in the US get destroyed by the local monopolies: Verizon and Comcast. Even Google Fiber is only getting an upstart because they're purchasing Municipal Wires, paid for by local citizens.

The Free Market isn't magical, it has its limits.

There are some! But it varies a lot by region. And there's been a lot of consolidation-of-providers wherever service is easier to provide.

So where there are only a few hard-to-service households missed by the mainline services, or other local geographic/infrastructure challenges, there may be no local micro-ISPs/experts, and thus only extremely expensive custom options.

That the author describes his residence by County, rather than some incorporated town/city, is a strong indicator that even though he's in the Seattle area, he's very possibly in a very low-density, rural area. He might even be on well-water and a septic-tank, rather than utility water/sewer.

Kitsap is across the Sound from Seattle, it is a fairly rural area. But as the author pointed out it has some nice views.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com